Casablanca: How An Unproduced Play Marched into Movie History

Warner Bros. bought the 1940 play *Everybody Comes to Rick’s* after Pearl Harbor and turned it into the 1942 film *Casablanca*, which premiered in November as U.S. forces entered Morocco. The screenplay was repeatedly rewritten by the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman starred in the wartime romance set in Vichy-controlled North Africa. The film won three Academy Awards, became a box-office hit, and made Bogart the highest-paid star in Hollywood.